Bombs on Bikes: The Carnage Continues
It seems like the bomber with a manageable payload has recognized in the bicycle a practical means of delivery in crowded urban areas. As we showed last summer, bombings in which the bike plays a key role are a staple in media reports from the insurgent front lines. Bike bombings may be overshadowed by more spectacular attacks, but the bicycle remains so banal a delivery device as to make it both particularly effective and downright “dastardly” (as India’s Prime Minister said). Recent attacks to remind us that the bike is not only practical transportation but an increasingly useful means of inciting terror.
Throughout South Asia the bicycle is as ubiquitous as roadside food vendors. They’re a common means of conveyance throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan (among other developing nations) because their low cost makes them universally accessible and their low profile affords them access to every street. Attackers adapt their means, of course, so it should be no surprise that the tactic that made an high-profile appearance in Northern Ireland as a tool of the IRA has gained traction elsewhere.
The Philippines may not immediately suggest itself as a hub of bike-borne terror, but the tactic is not unknown. This past January, nine people were injured by a bicycle-mounted bomb in Iligan, a city in the southern Philippines. Authorities attributed the attack to extortion, but then again the nation is no stranger to insurgent attackers including left-wing revolutionaries and Islamic political movements. Here extortion appears the outlier, though a long list of published attacks there shows that the bicycle makes a rare appearance.
In Afghanistan & Pakistan the bicycle-borne bomb does make a much more frequent appearance unfortunately. Last July, in Pakistan’s major port city of Karachi, a remote-control bomb was left on a bicycle to target officials from the Pakistan national space agency. The attack anticipated a wave of terror that has hit Karachi this year, but according to a report then, the bike-mounted bomb had added an additional 1 dead and 15 wounded to the mid-2012 tally of 740 dead (!) from terror attacks. By those numbers, bike bomb attacks are few and far between but nonetheless deadly. Tribal infighting was cited as behind the attack.
On January 23rd a bicycle bomb killed a cop and wounded five in Herat Province in Afghanistan. And on January 28th in Pakistan, a twenty pound bomb attached to a bicycle parked near an air pump was defused. In April, a bike bomb attack on a general election election in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta wounded 17. Speculation centered on insurgents pressing for autonomy and control over natural resources as Quetta is the capital of the oil and gas-rich province of Baluchistan.
The big bike-related terror score came in February when a bomb mounted on a bicycle was reported to kill 17 in Hyderabad’s Dilsukhnagar district. It is the second time a bike bomb had exploded in the popular marketplace and entertainment destination, which is often frequented by younger folks. “This is a dastardly attack,” said India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after that and another bomb exploded in a Hyderabad marketplace. “The guilty will not go unpunished.”
This time, authorities concluded that a bomb was either integrated into an old Atlas-brand frame (newly repainted by hand, with newer wheels & tires, chain, brakes freewheel and pedals) or perhaps left in a rear rack bag. With only the front of one of the bikes salvageable for analysis, kit particulars were released to the public in a bid to lure bike mechanics or bike sellers to come forward with information.
The Hyderabad event shows the value of the bike-mounted bomb: it provides access to a crowded place where the ubiquity of the bike puts it above suspicion. And too often, the perpetrators of this kind of attack do go unpunished because it’s difficult to trace a bicycle. Indeed Singh’s statement also reminded us how the utility of the bicycle also makes solving such crimes so challenging: the car is expensive and manufactured, sold and licensed with an identifying number, but the bicycle itself offers no such clues as serial numbers (when available) go unrecorded and ownership is anonymous. The provenance of a bike-bomb attack is hard to establish.
The bomber’s convenience is the rider’s anguish. Those who celebrate the bicycle, perhaps the most graceful and efficient human-powered machine ever devised, are especially sad to see it repurposed for harm. But there are practical concerns too. The sheer ubiquity of the bicycle puts all riders on watch now. Where checkpoints choke traffic in vetting for car bombs and blast walls close off entire neighborhoods completely, the bicycle can slip through unimpeded and largely unnoticed. Central Asia Online found that honest cyclists there like deliverymen, workers, and the poor generally, were coming under new suspicion simply for riding a bicycle.
Can it happen in the West too? Authorities are on-guard. London police are keenly aware and clear bicycles from anywhere near official functions. Though no bike-borne bombs have surfaced in the United States, in Michigan authorities seem on-edge with anticipation. So take a lesson from this bike rider who slapped a ‘This Bike is a Pipe Bomb’ sticker (referring to a defunct Florida band) on his ride and was promptly hauled in. Don’t even suggest harm to anything but the car lobby!
The good news is the bicycle always retains its traditional utility as basic transportation. News correspondents reported that Taliban insurgents pedalled out of cities after the US-led attack routed them in 2002. “The majority of Taliban fled using bicycles or motorcycles,” said Pakistan commentator Abdul Haq Omari. “Even Mullah Omar used a bike to escape from Kandahar.”